SRE interviews help thread
I see a lot of help/prep material for SWE and other interviews but very limited when it comes to SRE. Can someone be a mentor and guide me to prepare for these interviews? I know OS, networking, Linux and DB generals are essential with some architecture knowledge but I want to target resources. Scripting and stuff? How about open ended questions? Help would be much appreciated. Current TC: half 🥜 YoE: 1+ #sre #interviews
Thanks for the link. I've started with this book
"Systems Performance by Brendan Gregg". This book really helps with your troubleshooting skills. Easy to read and doesn't spend time on unnecessary topics. For system design, most recommended one is "Designing Data Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann" which is 900+ pages long. If you are in a hurry then read whitepapers for cassandra, google file system. Look for documentation pages of open-source distributed systems that covers the architecture and implementation details. Coding round depends on the company. For most of them, basic scripting skills are enough to pass. Learn shell commands awk,sed,grep,xargs. These are mostly log parsing questions and in worst case you have to use some python (any language). Some (including Google) asks for leetcode easy-medium style question (basic DSA and no DP). OS/Networking questions are really easy if you have a basic idea about these topics. Books recommended for these topics are mostly academic and really unnecessary if you don't have enough time to prepare. You can find a lot of questions online. Learn about some basic protocols for Networking round - DNS,TLS,TCP etc. For OS - filesystem, virtual memory, cpu scheduling, ipc. Books - "Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces", "TCP/IP Illustrated". For linux specific implementation - "Linux Kernel Development by Robert Love"
Wow! Thank you so much for a detailed reply.
I went through a bunch of SRE interviews recently. Your interview depends on the company and the topics you mention cover most of it. But also read up on basic SRE principles like SLO, SLA, SLI, error budget, etc. As you gain more experience, you'll get asked Troubleshooting scenarios and system design
I've above 1 year experience and have had 2-3 interviews where they grill with open ended questions. Scenarios like: Fix this... Okay it's good Still not working. Now what? And now what? And at the end i just run out of ideas and techniques. Can you please list some resources too?
Man, I couldn't find any comprehensive resource for troubleshooting like problems. We need a CTCI like structured book on troubleshooting. If you find one let me know, please